The New “Dream Team”: cPanel and WHMCS
One of the things that make managing a website through affordable hosting platforms like Midphase, is the ability to leverage cPanel, the industry-leading control panel.
In a nutshell, cPanel software allows hosting companies and hosting customers to more easily operate servers and websites. It’s been in business since 1997 and is arguably the standard for web hosting automation. cPanel allows Midphase to drive costs for customers and add additional, free, features.
cPanel provides a user-friendly interface to help website owners manage their sites, while complementary WHM automates server management tasks for server administrators.
In parallel, WHMCS (WebHost Manager Complete Solution) is a system that speeds up the provisioning of new accounts, client management, billing and support for a hosting provider, like Midphase.
“Together, they reduce overhead by simplifying complex tasks and allowing customers to manage their own accounts,” said cPanel.
But, while they work great together they are not seen as completely unified. The goal of integrating the two solutions has always been on the cards for a while, but nobody was sure when it would actually happen.
Around July 16th, 2012, cPanel confirmed that these two web hosting industry giants were coming together under a new partnership; which, we might add, bodes well for all shared server and dedicated server hosting customers.
“We have felt for some time now that a much-needed component for cPanel & WHM was an e-commerce solution to automate billing, account creation, and so on,” says Aaron Phillips, the vice president of operations at cPanel, Inc. “We knew if we built our own product, we would be competing primarily against WHMCS, and the challenge would be to produce something better.”
The cPanel blog said that under the new agreement, cPanel, Inc., would now have a financial stake in WHMCS Ltd. This strategy gives WHMCS Ltd. access to cPanel, Inc.’s vast business resources, and also allows both companies to benefit from shared expertise under a “brain trust” model.
“As a result, customers can enjoy tighter integration and an optimized exchange of information between the two individual platforms.”
Web hosting customers will gradually see this partnership manifest itself in new features for control panels that administer shared hosting and dedicated server websites.